XLIV
Upon that battlefield of Gravelotte, France, driven to bay, fought like a royal tigress. How many times the dark blue Divisions were thrown back in their assault upon positions zoned with death-bellowing cannon and death-barking mitrailleuses, History relates. So murderous was the fire of her chassepotiers from their densely manned rifle-pits that you could trace Moltke's plans of assault in mounds of dead Uhlan cavalry and long regular swathes of motionless blue objects that had been Schmidt, Schultz, and Kunz....
Yet if the Warlock had said within himself, "This shall be above all a battle of cavalry," it would seem as though the determination had been formed upon the other side.
For this day that saw the death-charge of Von Bredow's brigade upon the Gorze Road—Uhlans, White Cuirassiers, and Dragoons of the Guard hurled in a solid column of shining steel against French field-batteries and battalions of riflemen—also saw the cavalry of Frossard, of Ladmirault, and Canrobert ride down whole squares of German infantry, who rose again and poured in volleys from their needle-guns, to be beaten down by the storms of leaden hail ground out by the mitrailleuse.
A glowing, coppery sun looked down on those six square miles of fiercely contested ground. Over its whole expanse there was not one patch as big as a National School playground without its débris of arms and accouterments, its ghastly or ludicrous tokens of war.
In an intermittent lull of the racket you could hear the dry earth, that had been pounded bare of verdure, sucking moisture as though after heavy rain. Only the rain was red. The faint, sour smell of it came to the nostrils mingled with the smell of burnt gunpowder, human and equine exhalations, and the acrid stifle of burning wood.
For Flavigny was yet smouldering, the farm-buildings at Gorze were burning, Malmaison was a furnace; houses and barns at Verneville were wrapped in clouds of black smoke shot with lurid flame.
Exhausted battalions, sick and stupefied with slaughter, were lying down among the dead and the wounded to snatch a wink of sleep. Others opened their haversacks to snatch a hasty mouthful, or drained their canteens of the last drop. Surgeons were going up and down among them, patching up flesh-cuts with lint and diachylon, temporarily plugging bullet-wounds of the minor order. "There!" they would say to the Schmidt, Kunz, or Schultz so treated; "now you are fit for fighting again!"
Perhaps you can see the Man of Iron in his white Cuirassier cap, black undress frock with the pewter buttons, and great steel-spurred jack-boots, standing, grim-jawed and inscrutable, behind his King's camp-chair. Through the stress and storm of two long days of hot fighting, that patch of high ground south of Flavigny had been the point to which orderlies and aides-de-camp furiously galloped from every point of the compass, and from which they galloped back in even more desperate haste.
In the rear of the camp-chair, not so close to it as to draw fire, were the King's personal military staff, a bevy of Princes, and the representative of the British War Office, Colonel ——. Several Councillors and Secretaries of the Chancellor's traveling Foreign Office stood about, stout, gray-haired, important-looking persons in semi-military uniform. The carriages that had conveyed them waited at Tronville. The King's charger and those of the other great personages were in the care of orderlies. The Escort waited by their horses in the background.
Moltke stood apart, taciturn and inscrutable, nursing his thin elbow and cupping his long chin. Roon, who contrary to his custom was not wearing his helmet, gloomily champed his cap-strap, unable to disguise his anguish of anxiety. He would have given a year of life to say:
"Old man, so cool in the midst of this hellish slaughter, can it be that you do not know how things really are going? Since two of the clock the French have had the best of it! The chassepot you termed a 'magnificent weapon' has justified your eulogism. The mitrailleuse we despised, not comprehending its terrible capabilities, has revealed them to our undoing. The Army of United Germany bleeds at every pore!"
He tore his mustache, the dye upon which had not been renewed recently. His heart swelled with the flood of pent-up speech.
"The Commander-in-Chief's dispatches to the Queen have been cheered in Berlin. Throughout Germany they are hailed with joy.... 'France now fights with her back to the Rhine,' the people say. 'Our Army stands arrayed between Bazaine and Paris!' Is it possible they do not realize that the situation is critical? Have they no suspicion that the tables might be turned?"
He wrung his knotted hands together in torment, and the sweat started in gouts upon his livid skin.
"Before us the Army of Bazaine—behind us at Châlons the Army of MacMahon. Were the Duke of Magenta with his recuperated Divisions to advance energetically and swiftly to the relief of his brother Marshal—could the Crown Prince hold him back? And if he could not, what were our chance worth?..."
The sentence had escaped Roon without his knowledge. Moltke's wrinkled visage turned his way. The scarlet-rimmed eyes glittered on him a moment. Roon leaped as the dry voice said:
"Not so much as a pinch of snuff!"
The War Minister stammered:
"Pardon, Your Excellency! You spoke to me?..."
Moltke answered quietly:
"I asked if you could spare me a pinch of snuff. My box is empty." He opened the little silver receptacle and turned it upside down, tapping it on his finger nail: "Neither have I a single cigar!"
Roon had forgotten his cigar-case in quarters. He fumbled for his snuff-box, thought it must be in his cloak. A resonant voice said from behind the King's camp-chair: "Will Your Excellency take one of these?"
"Why not? why not? If they are not too strong for me...." The Warlock smiled, showing his toothless gums. The Chancellor said, opening and offering the plain green leather case with the coroneted B stamped in gilding on it:
"It may be they are stronger than you are accustomed to smoke?"
Moltke's keen, swift glance met the heavy blue stare of the Chancellor. He returned:
"I will answer Your Excellency when I have tested them."
The case held three Havanas of varying merit. Two were good, one super-excellent. The withered hand hovered, paused above them, made selection, while the sharp, glittering glance seemed to say: "So! ... You are trying again the test you put me to at Königgratz! See! I am cool enough to choose the better creed!" While Bismarck returned the case to his breeches-pocket, mentally commenting:
"Excellent. He has chosen the best one. He is not flustered—he has yet a trump to play!"
Believed, he returned to his post behind the King's camp-chair, a rugged, powerful figure, with the face of a thoroughbred mastiff, unwearyingly keeping guard lest meaner influences should undermine his power and topple his unfinished life-work down.
Watching the battle through these noonday hours, he had, being a practical soldier as well as a consummate statesman, known some moments of horrible foreboding. Now his courage revived. The work would be completed. The well-shaped, sun-browned hand lightly resting on the chair-back would hold all Germany within its iron grip.
The thrill of conscious power transmitted itself to the King, it may be, for he moved impatiently in his seat. Sometimes he must have chafed, the white-haired Hohenzollern chieftain, knowing himself a puppet in the hands of his powerful Minister.
"How they fight! How they fight! Ach Gott!" he muttered. "Wouldst thou have credited, Otto, that such fire was left in France?"
And the helmeted head of the old chieftain shook with an uncontrollable nervous spasm. Over it came the scoffing retort:
"It is the fire of fever, the fire of phosphorescence. It will leave them weak and debilitated—it will glimmer out and go black. And yet Bazaine, contemptible as a strategist, has his moments of inspiration. The thrust of the skilled fencer will sometimes puzzle the master of swordsmanship.... Frossard and Canrobert are devout Catholics, and no doubt believe in guardian-spirits. They have had a hint, it may be, from some celestial Field Marshal; St. Louis, possibly, or the Chevalier de Bayard."
The King murmured, unheeding the jest, his eyes glued to the field-glasses that jerked in his shaking hands:
"Even a victory could not bring my soldiers of the Guard to life again. And there! Dost thou see?..."
The Minister turned his own binoculars in the indicated quarter. What remained of a Division of the Prussian 10th Corps, with a brigade of cavalry, Uhlans and Dragoons, was locked in the death-grip with a Cavalry Division of Bazaine's own corps, the Third, on the plain between the Bois de Vionville and the Bois de Gaumont. And even the Chancellor's iron hand trembled as with ague, and his breathing harshened perceptibly as he carefully focused the glasses on the fight. He said after a moment:
"Those three regiments of cavalry on brown horses with green, silver-laced dolmans and red-bagged talpacks are Chasseurs of the Imperial Guard. Fine fellows! They have a man to lead them, it would seem, in that little Colonel with the big paunch."
The Brigadier of the Chasseurs had been killed by a shell, and upon Paunchy had devolved the leadership. Twice he had led the green dolmans in shattering charges, under the stress of which the dark blue islands of infantry had hollowed and caved in. Twice he had fought his way out at the head of his shrunken and mutilated squadrons. Now, sweeping round, the Dragoons and Uhlans had attacked the Chasseurs furiously in the rear.
All that could be seen, even through the binoculars, was a shifting kaleidoscopic jumble of gay uniforms. Men's heads and arms rising and falling, flashing swords, flickering lance-pennons, and the crests and hindquarters of plunging beasts.... Hence Kraus, Klaus, and Klein of the blue infantry could not fire into the mêlée for fear of shooting their countrymen. Red Breeches hesitated to use his chassepot on the same count.
About a bushy knoll to the left of the struggle, the German cavalry circled like swallows, greedily assailing a swarm of green and red dragon-flies. The chasseurs' cartridge-boxes being empty, they used their long sabers as they had used their carbines, coolly and effectively; and Paunchy, lifted above the press by the little knoll referred to, encouraged them with looks and gestures and words.
"Courage, my children! ... Follow me! ... Bravo! ... One moment's breathing-space, and at them again!"
He was only a green and scarlet speck in the midst of an aggregation of other specks on the vast battlefield, yet the King and the Minister watched him with fixed regard.
"Grosser Gott! How that man fights!" the King muttered at one point in the conflict, and the rejoinder came from overhead:
"He is gallant, certainly, but a bit of an actor. Would not one say that flourish was meant for the ladies in the orchestra-stalls?"
"Because he has kissed a medal or a relic?" the King muttered, tugging at his white whisker. "Doubtless he is Catholic.... We ourselves have many brave soldiers of the Roman faith!"
For as his squadrons ever thinned and dwindled, every instant paying toll to the great swords of the Prussian Dragoons and the blood-thirsty Uhlan lances, they had seen the little Brigadier take from the breast of his green dolman something white and press his bearded lips to it, and thrust it back again, and sign himself with the Cross.
"Hurrah Preussen! Immer vorwärts!" yelled the Uhlans, as their dripping lance-points flickered in and out between the red-stained sword-blades, and the bodies of dead Chasseurs and dead horses rose in a mound about the knoll where stood the little Brigadier.
Paunchy possessed a great voice. His "Chargez!" had reached the ears of the King and his Chancellor through all the pandemonium of battle. When his Staff trumpeter's instrument, bullet-pierced, gave forth no sound but a strangled screeching, the little Colonel's thundering "Feu!" needed no trumpet to make the order plain. Now, his "Vive la France! Vive l'Empereur!" boomed out like the roar of a dying lion. His melting squadrons gave back the rallying-cry.
But they were lost. Prisoned within the ring of piercing steel that tirelessly revolved about them, they could kill, but they could not break through the barrier. Fresh squadrons rushed with hoarse shouts to the aid of the German cavalry. The Chasseurs were hopelessly outnumbered, and must inevitably be crushed.
The subaltern who bore the Imperial standard got a lance-thrust in the shoulder. At the same moment, his horse was shot dead. As the beast reared in the death-throe and went down under the plunging hoofs of the maddened horses round him, the Colonel leaned from his saddle, seized the hand that gripped the staff of the standard, drew the fainting officer upward, and laid him across his own saddle-bow. Then, as his gallant horse braced itself to bear the double burden, the rider lifted high the glistening folds of the tricolor topped by the golden Imperial eagle, and as the Uhlans charged the knoll he shouted again in terrible tones the slogan of the dying Empire:
"Vive la France! Vive l'Empereur!"
War has many of these sublime moments mingled with her squalid hideousness. Upon this day many a soldier, French and German, died as finely as the father of Juliette. You are to see him—bareheaded, for the fur talpack with the plume of green and scarlet had been sheared from his head by a glancing sword-cut—lifting a war-flushed forehead to the sky all sunset-red. Then a mortal lance-thrust reached him over the body that lay across his horse's withers, and he reeled upon his saddle, and fell backward, partly swathed in the Flag for which so many heroes have died.
Through the tricolored folds yet other Uhlan lance-points reached him. Did any thought of his daughter pass through the brain of the dying soldier between the sharp pangs of the probing steel?
"My child ... safe ... neutral territory.... Charles ... honest man ... protect my girl from Adelaide! Now ... death! Ah!—agony! Save, Jesu! ... Mary, help!"
A few of his gallant Chasseurs surrendered. But these were only a handful. Nearly the whole strength of his brigade of three regiments lay dead upon that patch of common that was cumbered with their corpses and those of their enemies.